caused damage to their home, business past that we didn't know about. I'm
or equipment. It was during those surprised that there's not more talk
investigations that he began to notice about this problem," Mickey said.
a trend — several houses that suffered "It seems like a rash of these have
electrical ﬁres recently had foundation happened in the last yezir."
‘’‘’‘’’k '‘’’“‘‘’"‘‘“d‘ since this problem is relatively new
”LasI year, I saw maybe a dozen to the 811 community and electrical
foundation repairs that caused companies, Mickey wasn't sure of a fail-
damage to homes one way or another, sate procedure that would prevent this
sometimes quite catastrophic — in sort of disaster trom happening. But he ‘ \
some cases the houie lJurl}1‘Ed down," didgay that col'i2if'nunil:tat'ion will be key ‘,1 F 0
Mickey said. ”One ouse ad to t e success o uture initiatives.
foundation work that caused it and tyvo 0}“ D‘ ‘he things he menmmed m B"
nth” homes ‘D bum m 3 ml-de-Sac during 2 recent damage prevention ‘
Mickey said that during investigations council meeting was to consider adding »\ I
he's seen several instances when a intormation about toundation repairs vt ‘ ,
house gets jacked up, it causes a wire to tuture tickets, alerting utility owner/ I ,1’ ..r .
to pull out or a lug in the meter socket, operators that this type ot work would ' "mg ,
causing a short. But sometimes the be done. "n___ K./1. _ - l;
”The foundation repair that caused of time, we'd roll a truck out with one ' .
the three house ﬁres on one cul-de-sac or our design engineers —jusI like we
pulled the energized conductor loose do when a customer wants new service ‘
and down into the ground going into or an upgrade," he said. "We will look .
the house," he said. "Since everything at it and put into play countermeasures
is connected to ground, and the ground to allow them do what they need to do
is ultimately connected through water without any hazard or danger Any
lines back to the city main, that‘s how utility would be happy to do that."
“ 3”‘ “’ ‘h“ "”‘°’ “"’° l‘“’“°"" me some ot the less-reputable toundation
plumbing got hot and charred the ’ .
. _ . _ ,, repair companies will ask the
wand’ whmh tamed H“ hm" homeowner to call 811 to report the
Surprisinhagly, the dharna}g‘e doesn't dhigglnf activity, rather thlan hanﬁlliﬁgl
always ppen w ile t e toundation t e tic et request emse ves, w ic a so _
work is underway — the hazard can complicates things, according to Mickey to t a | k W H h a n
linger undetected tor months. And many of the foundation repair
"We had an incidentlastyearwhere §:;;;,a;;?;,“:;ﬂ‘;:',::;;';?{;;f:;§',::fu, excavator?
the house had been leveled and the
of any damage that may arise from
contractor had been ﬁnished tor about mm wmk _ induding immm Whm
“"2” '“‘““l‘='- “WY “W “W Wm“ electric lines were damaged andcaused 8 3 5 % Of
during a dry season. During the next gm ’ ' .
big rain the ground got saturated, " 8 1 1 M a g a z I n e
causing the ground to swell and the He also mentioned that it's likely that re a d e r S a
house to raise up a little more — and not many leveling contractors are aware
that the straw that broke the that this problem can occur, it‘s e x c a v a t o r s a n cl
camel's back. It caused damage to the certainly not something that happens on y e S O u C 3 n
customer's appliances." every job ’ K
_ , M , r e a c t h e m
Mickey thinks this problem is more There may be toundation people out
widespread and common than one there who on.ly know this is going f0 I’ l E S 5 Ch 3 fl
might expect, given that not every on because they've experienced it 5 C e n t 5 _
incident is investigated to its end. If themselves. If they've never been faced
a customer doesn't make a claim that with this, they might not know," he said.
CoServ is responsible for an incident, 7 . .
h . . . it you re a homeowner having this
is investigations are typically wrapped
. _ _ type of work done, make sure your , , , , , .
up quickly, so there are likely dozens _ t, leir e it rt up as H‘
contractor is aware that they are i
ot other incidents that have gone . . .
responsible tor submitting a ticket to 5 0 7 _ 9 6 9 _ 7 0 0 0
““d°“°“d‘ 311 betore they dig and request that *
”We have an outside contractor that they also contact the electric company
comes in and gives us expert torensic to ensure this type of damage doesn't ‘, 3 ‘D ‘V I? __V V V W _ A 7 I F’ C , Q
assistance on certain Cases, so we've occur ‘" " " "<1 " ‘ “d1"‘ ‘ ‘ I’ ’ ’ " "
learned a lot more about this. I'm sure .
we have had a bunch or these in the 0”’ “ml “WW Md ““ 5"‘ P"“‘- .
2ﬂ1E.lssue a tonrnnoa Prevention Jaunul E17